Guess Your Age? 3D Facial Scan Beats Doctor's Exam

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It's no secret that most people accumulate wrinkles on their
faces as they age. But now, a 3D analysis of those wrinkles and
other signs of aging could reveal a person's age based on only an
image of his or her face, a new study finds.

The researchers also found that levels of several biological
markers in people's blood are associated with the markers of
aging that appear on people's faces. For instance, women with
older-looking faces tend to have higher levels of "bad"
cholesterol, the researchers found.

"3D facial images can really tell your biological age," said the
study's senior researcher Jing-Dong Han, a professor of
computational biology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the
Max Planck Partner Institute in Shanghai. "It's really more
accurate than a physical exam." [ 8
Tips for Healthy Aging ]

In the study, the researchers used a special camera, called the
3dMDface System, to take 3D facial scans of 332 Chinese people.
The scientists also collected blood samples from the
participants, who ranged in age from 17 to 77 years old.

An analysis of the 3D scans revealed several patterns: As a
person grows older, the mouth grows longer, the nose becomes
wider, the forehead narrows, and the distances between the mouth
and nose increases, the researchers found. The corners of the
eyes also droop with age, likely because of gravity's relentless
pull, the scientists said.

Moreover, young faces are smoother and thinner than old faces,
while old faces have more sagging and fat accumulation and fuller
cheeks than young faces, the researchers wrote in the study.

The researchers created a mathematical model to calculate each
person's age based on the 3D scans. Results showed that people
younger than 40 can look up to six years younger or six years
older than their actual ages, based on their facial features. So,
people who are 30 years old might look as young as 24 or as old
as 36.

Variation increased in people older than age 40, meaning that
some people looked much younger, whereas others looked much
older, making it harder to determine their true ages, the
researchers said.

This new model could help identify which people are aging
physiologically faster, or slower, than their chronological age
suggests, the researchers said.

It may also help doctors tailor treatments for individuals, Han
said. For example, fast agers, meaning the people who have
reached physiological ages that are
older than their chronological age s, could perhaps receive
treatment more suited for older people, she said. (For example,
older people with cancer usually receive smaller doses of
chemotherapy than younger people do, she said.)

The biological indicators in the participants' blood samples also
showed age correlations with people's faces. Women with
older-looking faces tended to have higher levels of "bad"
cholesterol. In men, those with older-aged faces tended to have
lower levels of albumin, a protein found in blood plasma.

Moreover, high levels of "good" cholesterol and albumin were
associated with reduced fullness in the cheeks and the regions
below the eyes in both men and women, the researchers said.

"But so far I don't know if this is causal or a mere
correlation," Han said of the
blood biomarker results.

Still, the new model shows that 3D facial imaging is a better
predictor of a person's true age than current blood profiles, Han
said.

The results are likely to vary among people of different
ethnicities, however, said Dr. Jean Carruthers, a clinical
professor of ophthalmology, who specializes in facial cosmetic
surgery at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, who
was not involved in the study.

"I liked their concepts of slow and faster agers, but more
work will be needed to correlate the future health of these
subjects with their facial parameters over a period of time,"
Carruthers told Live Science.

Han agreed, and said that she has collaborators in the United
States who are interested in collecting American samples. In the
future, Han and her colleagues may also look at other biomarkers,
such as microRNA
expression, and see whether they are tied to aging.

The study was published online today (March 31) in the Nature
journal Cell
Research.